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Title: Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

Release Date: September 21, 2005 [eBook #16729]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS

by

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.

London:
MacMillan and Co.
London
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers,
Bread Street Hill.

1870

A PREFATORY LETTER.

MY DEAR TYNDALL,

I should have liked to provide this collection of "Lay Sermons,
Addresses, and Reviews," with a Dedication and a Preface. In the former,
I should have asked you to allow me to associate your name with the
book, chiefly on the ground that the oldest of the papers in it is a
good deal younger than our friendship. In the latter, I intended to
comment upon certain criticisms with which some of these Essays have
been met.

But, on turning the matter over in my mind, I began to fear that a
formal dedication at the beginning of such a volume would look like a
grand lodge in front of a set of cottages; while a complete defence of
any of my old papers would simply amount to writing a new one--a labour
for which I am, at present, by no means fit.

The book must go forth, therefore, without any better substitute for
either Dedication, or Preface, than this letter; before concluding which
it is necessary for me to notify you, and any other reader, of two or
three matters.

The first is, that the oldest Essay of the whole, that "On the
Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences," contains a view of
the nature of the differences between living and not-living bodies out
of which I have long since grown.

Secondly, in the same paper, there is a statement concerning the method
of the mathematical sciences, which, repeated and expanded elsewhere,
brought upon me, during the meeting of the British Association at
Exeter, the art